All that is gift and ‘of God’ shall remain
To glint like shook foil in the day’s dying rays.
Well may we say nothing gold ever stays:
Truth blinds us in half light that slants through the pane.
It’s easy to miss that to grasp is to lose.
The Buddhist nun told me – I let that thought go;
The one that could save me was too good to know.
And now my house bulges with motley refuse.
Yet here I find what I love most was unsought …
From out of a gutter came Mochi, the cat;
Blue earrings, a birthday gift; free Afghan mat …
They sear my heart: goodness that I never bought.
What of the mendicants and their free souls?
Pressing unburdened feet into the grass
To kiss the earth gently in each town they pass,
Carrying but emptiness in their clean bowls?
Should I be a beggar to learn how to live?
Shun all that I own like Francis of Assisi,
Or sit like Siddhartha beneath the Bodhi tree?
I could, perhaps; let me first learn how to give.
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